April 2010

April 27, 2010

Regular readers of this blog will know I've been conducting and writingabout an extensive field research into business process management (BPM). Before we started this field research, all we could hear about BPM in the industry was great news! Universal acclaim abounded for this BPM thing from Vendors, journalists and indeed analysts ...

With this kind of hype in the air, we were skeptical and wanted to find out the true situation. Nobody talks much about the challenges of getting value from BPM. We didn't know anyone experiencing this kind of ROI.

So, what did we do? We talked to people leading BPM initiatives. Open-ended discussions with 35 business and IT leaders representing 21 organizations revealed complex and subtly differing opinions on BPM.

What did we find? The core finding statement of the study is:

BPM is valuable and it does deliver measurable return, but organizations are not getting this return from BPM because:

•They do not understand BPM

•They are too focused on BPM infrastructure

•They are succeeding with tactical projects

•They struggle with culture change required

Join me (Burton Group subscription required) for a 60 minute webinar at the following times in May to discuss the field research process, the 12 key findings that underpin this statement, and their implications for your BPM program:

April 09, 2010

Just a few days after the iPad became publicly available, Apple has rocked the world again with their iPhone OS 4.0 announcement yesterday. iPhone, and now iPad, users got what they wanted as the new OS is packed with new and interesting features. But the OS announcement isn't what rocked the world.

New Licensing Restrictions

Apple also made some changes to their developer agreement. In short, Apple does not seem to appreciate development frameworks that allow developers to create iPhone applications using an intermediary framework. It's pretty clear they want developers using Apple tools.

As far as I'm aware, John Gruber broke the news on this one, and provides a great overview. While this spells trouble for Adobe's new Flash-to-iPhone compiler, Adobe is not the only organization looking to make iPhone development easier. There are an abundance of other vendors and products for whom this change to the developer agreement may spell trouble for.

The language in the new agreement reads:

"...Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or
JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only
code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly
link against the Documented APIs..."

If I interpret this correctly (and it seems pretty clear), it appears that developers must use C, C++ or Objective-C to develop the application. And Apple will easily be able to recognize if a third-party framework was used, since many embed the framework and container into the application to serve as an intermediary component between the application and iPhone OS.

Market Impact

In an upcoming Burton Group market profile on mobile application development platforms, we make a point to talk about the burgeoning vendor market that is emerging to address the challenge of creating cross platform rich mobile applications. These changes to the developer agreement sends a crushing blow to this burgeoning market.

If you're an iPhone developer out there who currently uses Objective-C, you're jumping for joy today. Your stock just went up. If you're a consumer, with the plethora of high quality applications already available in the App Store, it's likely the impact is negligible. If you're an enterprise hoping to leverage a vendor solution to develop cross-platform mobile applications, make sure you do your homework in evaluating their products. Some, possibly many, already violate the new terms of the Apple iPhone OS 4 developer agreement, meaning the applications you develop using their solutions will be rejected by Apple once iPhone OS 4 is available.

I'm not an Apple fanboi. I love my iPhone (it is the single most useful gadget I own), but I have yet to give up my ThinkPad in favor of a MacBook. Nonetheless, I preordered an iPad, and I've had quite a bit of fun with it during the last 22 hours. (Documented in my tweetstream.)

Last night, a high school friend responded to one of my tweets via Facebook asking,

"So, dying to know- is it better than reading on a Kindle?"

The question indicates the misconceptions people have about the iPad. It's a great book reader, but it's so much more than a book reader.

In answer to my friend's question: I can't compare Kindle to iBooks, because I haven't bought any iBooks
yet. (Note to self -- pick up some public domain books from the iBooks
store and do a comparison.) But the good news is that I can read all my Kindle books on the iPad using the Kindle iPad app. I'm very happy that Amazon made (and Apple approved) a Kindle player for the iPad, because I don't have to buy separate books for the two devices. Kindle on the iPad is a lot like Kindle on the Kindle. The Kindle is lighter-weight, and it works a lot better in bright light. So bottom line: If I want to read at the beach, I'll take my Kindle. But when I go to
Prague later this month, I'll take the iPad and leave the Kindle behind. And that's because I can do so much more with the iPad.

The iPad comes with the same basic apps you get on an iPhone/iTouch:

Safari: a great browser -- much nicer on the iPad than the iPhone

email: two panels:view the list on the left, view a selected email on the right -- nicer than the iPhone

calendar: beautiful -- I like it better than my Outlook calendar on my laptop

Google maps: spectacular -- better than on my laptop

Photos: fabulous! -- better than on my laptop

and contacts, notes, iPod, videos, YouTube, iTunes, and AppStore -- pretty much the same

news: BBC News, NPR, WSJ, USA Today, and AP News -- I no longer miss having Cable TV (news was the only think I was missing). The WSJ is better on the iPad than it is on paper.

video: Netflix and ABC Player -- awesome -- hoping Hulu will be available soon

music: Pandora

books: Kindle, iBooks

Reference: IMDB, Dictionary, This Day in History

Most of this stuff is free, although some require subscriptions for the content (Kindle,
WSJ, and Netflix.).

The only apps I've paid for thus far are DocumentsToGo (which I will use for work) and Elements,
which is an interactive "book" on the periodic table of elements
designed specifically for the iPad. This app is totally awesome, and it gives you a
sense of how tablets might completely alter the "book" industry. I can just imagine Grey's Anatomy as an iPad "book". Or any text book, for that matter. I fully expect the tablet industry to fundamentally change our teaching and learning systems.

All this on Day 1. And the industry has just barely started delivering apps that exploit the power of the tablet form-factor. The iPad won't be unique in the industry. I fully expect other vendors to copy it, and I'm looking forward to a vibrant and competitive tablet market. But the iPad has shown us what's possible.

I'm
really looking forward to seeing how this device will change the world.